G.B.H. (no 21)

 

(UK 1991 560m) DVD2

Come on, Eileen!

p  David Jones, Alan Bleasdale  d  Robert Young  w  Alan Bleasdale  ph  Peter Jessop  ed  Anthony Ham  m  Richard Harvey, Elvis Costello

Robert Lindsay (Michael Murray), Michael Palin (Jim Nelson), Lindsay Duncan (Barbara Douglas), Julie Walters (Lillian Murray), Dearbhla Molloy (Laura Nelson), Daniel Massey (Grosvenor), Michael Angelis (Martin), Tom Georgeson (Lou Barnes), Andrew Schofield (Peter), Peter Hugo Daly (Bubbles), David Ross (Matthew Weller), Alan Igbon (Teddy), Jimmy Mulville (Phillip), Philip Whitchurch (Frankie Murray), John Shrapnel (Doctor), Jane Danson (Eileen Critchley), Julia St John, William Gaunt, Anna Friel, Jean Anderson,

Bleasdale’s G.B.H. has always been a problem.  When it came out it was hailed as a small screen masterpiece to rank alongside his earlier BBC classic Boys from the Blackstuff, and was a sign of Channel 4’s continuing political agenda in drama following the previous success of Traffik.  It wasn’t and isn’t a panoramic view of a changing Britain over thirty years like Our Friends in the North, as Bleasdale is more interested in the here and now, the immediate problems of modern Britain, and he has always done this in an idiosyncratic, blackly humorous way.  Even the title is a misnomer for, though a lot of grievous bodily harm is depicted, he has always said the title stands for Great British Holiday. 

            A militant Labour councillor in an unnamed northern city (obviously Liverpool, indeed the story is partly based on the rise and fall of Derek Hatton) arranges a show of force, a day where the entire local government network shuts down – public transport, offices, schools, emergency services – but one school stays open, making its headmaster a hero to the politically apposite press and causing stress not only to the headmaster’s family, but to the councillor, from whose past various demons come back to haunt him.

            Fifteen years on a DVD was released, but not without some trepidation.  Recent race and religion riots in Oldham and other nearby North-West urban areas have almost made the series seem like life imitating art, when in actual fact the reverse was true in 1991.  I suppose the depiction of the ethnic minorities being beaten up by thugs actually sponsored by neo-fascists masquerading as hard-line Socialists really was a whole bag of hot potatoes, and one which prevented it from getting a DVD release much sooner, as it merited. 

            Despite this it would be not only wrong but almost libellous to call it merely an expose of political extremities, the notion that, to quote the protagonist, “the further left you go the more right you become” and the threat of neo-fascism.  On another level entirely it’s a black comedy, with certain sequences descending into manic, perfectly-timed farce.  Undoubtedly Bleasdale was at his absolute zenith, creating a series that didn’t just examine the plight of a whole class in Thatcherite Britain like its illustrious predecessor, but explaining why, to some extent, politics in general has become a farce, a masquerade on numerous levels.  Costello’s music perfectly compliments proceedings, while the entire cast are simply magnificent. One expects good things of Walters, chuck in Duncan’s gradually thawing ice-maiden and superb vignettes from Massey’s perpetually drunk hotelier with a passion for Hungarian Roulette, Ross’s T.S.Eliot-spouting old headmaster and Danson as truly one of the most evil children in screen history.  Add to this Palin, in easily his greatest performance, as a Labour man disillusioned with modern Labour, so perfectly cast as the unlikely hero, magnificent both comedically and dramatically, that one mourns the fact that his TV travel shows have kept him busy since.  However, the real star of the show is undoubtedly Lindsay, whose Michael Murray is arguably the single greatest performance in TV drama history.  Just to watch him trying to escape his wife and get it on with his intended mistress in a hotel overrun by characters from a Doctor Who convention and also trying to find the only condoms in the entire hotel, is simply beyond genius.  He’s a fall guy for all time, but it’s the tears that will stay with you as much as the laughs, and that is very much Bleasdale’s genius.